We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It’s very materialistic. It’s full of desire and luxury goods.
AI WEIWEII spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects.
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I think it’s quite narrow-minded. There wasn’t much encouragement or opportunities for any artist – not just Chinese artists.
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You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it’s empty.
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How to become a really modern society when today we are so – as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive.
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Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one’s imagination – perhaps more importantly – creativity is the power to act.
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But personally, I don’t think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it’s beyond my own consciousness.
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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.
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Civilization has evolved toward more acceptance, understanding and tolerance of global thinking. If we accept differences, our creativity booms. It makes life much more colorful.
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Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don’t design it, somebody else has to design it.
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During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.
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This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
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Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
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It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we’ll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.
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I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable – how we decide what is valuable.
AI WEIWEI